Jim Bumgardner: To make this, I downloaded public data from Hipparcos, a satellite launched by the European Space Agency in 1989 that accurately measured over a hundred thousand stars. The data I downloaded contains position, parallax, magnitude, and color information, among other things.
I used this information to plot the brightest stars, and cause them to revolve about Polaris (the North Star) very slowly, as the stars appear to do. Like the night sky, this is a sidereal time clock — it takes nearly 24 hours for the stars to fully rotate. You’ll notice some familiar constellations, such as the Big Dipper in there. As the stars cross zero and 180 degrees, indicated by the center line, the clock plays an individual note, or chime for each star. The pitch of the chime is based on the star’s BV measurement (which roughly corresponds to color or temperature). The volume is based on the star’s magnitude, or apparent brightness, and the stereo panning is based on the position on the screen (use headphones to hear it better).
Basically, this is a very literal kind of “music of the spheres,” and is typical of my projects, which often involve circles and music. This idea for making a music box out of stars was a natural progression from some previous projects of mine, like the Whitney Music Box, and Musical Chess, which you might also enjoy.
If you’d like a large, high fidelity Wheel of Stars to project on the ceiling of your home, gallery or museum, contact me. I’d be happy to provide you with software or suggestions.
Three units, which are resembling standard record players, translate concentric visual patterns into control signals for further processing in any music software. The rotation of the discs, each holding three tracks, can be synced to a sequencer.
The Soundmachines premiered on the Volkswagen New Beetle stand at the IAA motor show in late Summer 2011. In cooperation with the sounddesigner/producer Yannick Labbé of TRICKSKI fame, we developed three unique discs, each controlling one track of an Ableton Live Set exclusively made for the Event. The show was supported by a set of realtime generated visuals, running on a 25m wide LED wall.
The first cycle. A visualization of a creative production process, made for fashion designer Borre Akkersdijk.
An animation where the viewer is being taken by fiction and reality into the creative concept of it’s designer.
The animation was the introduction of his fashion show ‘The first cycle’ -from the yarn to the show- at the fashion week in Paris.
This animation was realized on the Motion cabinet by Niels Hoebers.
Anarchy Dance Theatre + UltraCombos
安娜琪舞蹈劇場 + 叁式
Nov. 2011, TAIWAN.
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Choreograph by Chieh-hua Hsieh
AnarchyDanceTheatre@gmail.com
This piece is still under progress. Premiere on Nov. 2012, TAIWAN.
Oterp is a mobile phone game project using a GPS sensor to manipulate music in real time, depending on the player’s position on Earth. It generates new melodies when traveling. The objective of Oterp is to mix the reality of our everyday environment with a video game. This is a new way to imagine our movements in a society increasingly on the move and dependent on mobile interfaces.
ZVO.ČI.TI. so.und.ing Collection is a podcast collection of Slovenian sound artists, composers of electroacoustic, experimental, algorithmic, electronic, improvised and composed works.
The DVD release of the ZVO.ČI.TI so.und.ing Collection represents the final part of the multi-year project devised to be a continuous production of thematic radio and podcast audio programmes about specific authors and works of theirs that were created in the studio or performed live.
The purpose of the project is to connect and highlight Slovenian authors who make contemporary music in the music performance, sound, intermedia, performing, online and other areas and to present them, using existing communication possibilities, into the wider arena of world contemporary sound creativity.
Slovak musician Lukáš Kmit responded by improvising his own classical version of the Nokia ringtone. Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Presov Slovakia. Recorded by GREATMILAN in July 30, 2011
Born with cerebral palsy, Dan Ellsey blossomed with help from Tod Machover, right. (MIT Media Lab, MIT Media Lab / February 24, 2008)
There is a great deal of music in the world, and no one knows exactly why. But it does have its ready uses. The music business can make you rich and famous. The pianist Christopher O’Riley admitted in The Times last week what a lot of classical musicians won’t: He learned the piano, at least in part, to attract the attention of girls.
As I write this, a sparkling new recording of Tod Machover’s “Sparkler,” an infectious overture for orchestra and live electronics, is playing on my stereo and making itself useful. The CD, “but not simpler…,” is drowning out trucks on a nearby home construction site whose backup beeps are loud enough to wake the dead a mile away. “Sparkler” is more effectively fueling my fingers as I type than was my morning double cappuccino. The music is lifting my spirits and making writing almost fun. Even so, I’m not getting the greatest, if least explicable, pleasure “Sparkler” can provide. That’s obtained by giving the score undivided attention.
Machover, an intriguing futurologist as well as an inventive composer, runs the departments in hyper-instruments (acoustical instruments given spiffy electronic features) and opera of the future at MIT’s ultra-high-tech Media Lab. Last week, he was at UC Santa Barbara to speak on “Music, Mind and Health: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Well-being through Active Sound,” one of four lectures he’s given recently at the university’s Sage Center for the Study of the Mind.
Written by Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times Music Critic. Continue HERE
A record player that plays slices of wood. Year ring data is translated into music, 2011. Modified turntable, computer, vvvv, camera, acrylic glass, veneer, approx. 90x50x50 cm.
A tree’s year rings are analyzed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently.
Thanks to Land Salzburg, Schmiede, Pro-ject Audio, Karla Spiluttini, Ivo Francx, vvvv, Rohol.
Satellite photos used to be for military eyes only, but Google Earth changed all that. Now something similar is happening to the ocean depths, with any web user able to listen in and “surf the sea floor” – and the US Navy is not happy.
“The cable is going underneath here,” says Benoit Pirenne, standing at the water’s edge on Canada’s Vancouver Island. “It’s going out 500 miles (800km) in a big loop in the ocean, coming back in the same place.”
The Vancouver cable connects a network of scientific instruments on the floor of the north Pacific, some as deep as 1.5 miles (2.5km).
Set up by Pirenne and his colleagues at the University of Victoria, and called Neptune Canada, they continuously monitor the marine environment.
Ocean floor listening posts in the north Pacific off Vancouver Island
The scientists are harvesting large amounts of information, including water pressure readings that help them better understand the movement of tsunamis through oceans, which they hope will lead to more accurate warning systems.
But they are also listening.
Pressure-sensitive microphones pick up the live sounds of everything from whales and shipping to seismic activity and the movement of tectonic plates, and this audio is shared with scientists all over the world.
It’s also now available to anyone else with an internet connection.
Written by Rhitu Chatterjee and Rob Hugh-Jones at BBC News. Continue HERE
Sound is ubiquitous and permanent, and embraces us as an envelope. Therefore, the experience of the auditory can be considered an environmental experience par excellence. The term and concept of soundscape reflects this idea. It implies, that sounds do not exist in isolation, and have to be understood as being embedded in and interacting with other sounds and perceptions coining the perceptional abilities of individuals and societies and their social relations: soundscape is a system in which all elements are interdependent.
No sound exists on its own: The Global Composition
Considering the world’s objects as instruments, its inhabitants as their players and all sounds on the globe taking place simultaneously, leads to the imagination of a global composition. Any audible phenomenon is part of this huge ongoing concert which includes all living beings and unites them in – mostly unintentional and uncoordinated – collaboration. Soundmakers, listeners and those, requesting sounds as a commodity, are part of a system and often one and the same person.
The Global Composition
Last year, Vice travelled to Matehuala, Mexico in search of dance crews who wear extremely pointy cowboy boots called botas vaqueras exóticas.
Vice: Last month we went to the dusty city of Matehuala, Mexico, in the northern state of San Luís Potosí on the high plateau of the Huasteca Potosina, in search of the pointiest long-toed cowboy boots ever made. Over the past year, the botas vaqueras exóticas phenomenon has overrun the rodeo dance floors and clubs of this area, much to the dissatisfaction of Mexicans who critique the fashions of their countrymen on hotly trafficked style blogs.
But we were told we were too late, that the wrongly maligned wearers of what are by far the most wondrous footwear we’ve ever seen had been replaced with short, square, “pig-nosed” boots by stubby contrarians.
We’d seen the occasional report about the exotic pointy-boot trend making its way stateside, spreading into Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and other places where big groups of immigrant Mexicans have taken root, and we expected that the odds were pretty low that the style had phased out of Mexico completely. So we made our way to Mesquit Rodeo and Desierto Light, two cowboy venues in Matehuala, where party promoters host dance-offs to music known as tribal guarachero. Essentially, this sound is a combination of thumpy house music, ancient Hispanic chants and flute work, and Colombian dance songs known as cumbia.
François Vautier: Five years ago, I installed an ant colony inside my old scanner that allowed me to scan in high definition this ever evolving microcosm (animal, vegetable and mineral). The resulting clip is a close-up examination of how these tiny beings live in this unique ant farm. I observed how decay and corrosion slowly but surely invaded the internal organs of the scanner. Nature gradually takes hold of this completely synthetic environment.
The ants are still alive : the process will continue…
Part of the WORLD EXPO Shanghai 2010, presented by “OPEN THIS END”
Music : Franks – Infected Mushroom.
Fabrizio Saiu works with Italian and European musicians and in some ensembles: Radici Ensemble, Ligatura and Pasceri Rinaldi Saiu Trio. In Perform Art he collaborates with ClgEnsemble; in Video Art and Photo with Alessandro Ligato, Stefano Mazzanti and Paolo Asaro; In Theater/Dance with the TIDA. He works within improvisation and contemporary music he works with Phi4, Ligatura and with the composer M. Montalbetti. Currently he is working on Objet sans corps: a performance focused on the dynamics of matter transformation, of movement, and of resonance in the relationship between man and environment.
Objet Sans Corps III and IV
The audio-visual document Objet sans corps is composed of 5 scenes and it lasts 14 minutes. The document is the Trace, the residue, the Supplement of a research on the dynamics of
matter transformation, of movement, and of the resonance on the link between man and environment. Every scene is focused on the circular repetition of the same movement and it is characterized by a precise and essential displacement of the body in the environment. The corporal acts do not have a ultimate aim, and their self-referential frees the body that on them produce itself from every functionality, canceling it inside itself. Is it through this alienation that Objet sans corps become an effect of the process instead of his outcom.
Feel free to mute the video above and use the alternative soundtrack below by JAMES McDOUGALLfrom his release on Impulsive Habitat.
Fishing under ice begins with a diver appearing to walk on the frozen floor of lake Saarijärvi in Vaala, Finland – but a few seconds later things strange things begin to happen.
Divers:
Fisherman: Eelis Rankka
Fisherman’s friend: Tommi Salminen
Boy with the balloon: Jukka Pelttari
Designed by Bruno Zamborlin. Mogees is a project that uses microphones to turn any surface into an interactive board, which associates different gestures with different sounds. This means that desktop drummers could transform their finger taps and hand slaps into the sound of a marimba or xylophone.
Users plug any contact microphone onto a surface — be it a tree, a cupboard, a piece of glass or even a balloon. They can then record several different types of touch using their hands or any objects that cause a sound — so one sound could be a hand slap, another could be a finger tap and another could be hitting the surface with a drumstick. Users can train the system to detect new types of touch recording them just once.
The different gestures can then be associated with different sounds. Then when the user wants to perform, the Mogees software will recognize which of these types of touch is closest to the one that the user is doing and then enable the corresponding sound engine or synthesizer. The tone of the synthesized sound is influenced by the actual sound picked up on the microphone. So you could use the same gesture — for example a tap — in different places on the surface and it would create the sound in a different key.
Mogees currently uses two audio synthesis techniques — the first is physical modelling, which consists of generating the sound by simulating the propagation of the sound wave through different physical materials such as strings, membranes, or tubes using a piece of software called Modalys. The second technique is mosaicing, where the user loads a sound folder and then the audio coming form the contact microphone is analyzed and the software looks for the closest segment within the sound folder. So if a sound folder of voices is loaded, touching the surface gently would provoke a whispering while scratching it will cause a sound similar to screaming voices.
The idea of using contact microphones comes from the desire to turn ordinary objects into percussive instruments. The goal is to allow musicians and performers to take full advantage of electronic music without losing the feeling of touching a real surface.
Below are radio waves from Saturn recorded by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, time compressed, and shifted down in frequency to an audible range.
Saturn by EverydayElk
From NASA:
The Cassini spacecraft began detecting these radio emissions in April 2002, when Cassini was 374 million kilometers (234 million miles) from the planet, using the Cassini radio and plasma wave science instrument. The radio and plasma wave instrument has now provided the first high resolution observations of these emissions, showing an amazing array of variations in frequency and time. The complex radio spectrum with rising and falling tones, is very similar to Earth’s auroral radio emissions. These structures indicate that there are numerous small radio sources moving along magnetic field lines threading the auroral region.
This sound installation depicts the possible problems of the flow of information. It tries to reflect the human mis-audition, the lapse of information and the social problems which derive from these. The design is clear and it has a transparent structure. Using analog technology and ignoring complicated ones are all used to strengthen the expressiveness of installation.
After turning on the Walkman the tape starts to move. Each Walkman plays the sound, which is on the tape, in a different point. However, the sound is the same the constants are chaotic. The reading points are not the same distance from each other. Some Walkmans are louder while others are quieter so the consonants are not homogeneous. If you bend closer to the Walkmans you can easily notice where they are in the course of replay.
Cacophony was made by: András Pongor, Soma Pongor, David Tarcali. Photo above by Danyi Balázs.
Most astronomers gaze at the heavens and see stars. William Chaplin hears an orchestra — a celestial symphony in which the smallest stars are flutes, the medium-sized ones are trombones and the giants are reverberating tubas.
The sounds are internal vibrations that reveal themselves as a subtle, rhythmic brightening and dimming of a star, explains Chaplin, an astrophysicist at the University of Birmingham, UK, and a specialist in asteroseismology. These waves provide information that astronomers can’t get in any other way: triggered by the turbulent rise and fall of hot gases on the star’s surface, the vibrations penetrate deep into the stellar interior and become resonating tones that reveal the star’s size, composition and mass (see ‘Celestial music’). So by watching for the characteristic fluctuations in brightness, says Chaplin, “we can literally build up a picture of what the inside of a star looks like”.
Better still, he adds, asteroseismologists are now hauling in the data wholesale. After years of being hampered by Earth’s turbulent atmosphere, which obscures the view of the Universe and has limited asteroseismology to about 20 of the brightest nearby stars, researchers have been astonished by the trove of information coming from a new generation of space observatories. Thanks to the French-led Convection, Rotation and Planetary Transits (COROT) space telescope, launched in 2006, and NASA’s Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009, they can now listen in on hundreds of stars at a time.
“We are in a golden age for the study of stellar structure and evolution,” says Hans Kjeldsen, an astronomer at Aarhus University in Denmark.
“Nature seems to have been kind to us,” agrees Ronald Gilliland, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. “The stars seem not to be shy about showing us lots of oscillations that will allow us to reveal their innermost secrets.” The flood of data has shed light on the interior of red-giant stars, and forced astronomers to question their understanding of how stars and galaxies form.
Gordon Monahan: Six long piano wires are suspended from the tower of the Royal Castle in Warsaw and are connected to a piano positioned in the middle of the square below. At the connecting point high above on the balcony of the tower, audio recordings played into an amplifier are transmitted into the long piano strings using vibrating coils in small motors attached to the wires, which cause the piano strings to vibrate in sympathy with the audio signals. The vibrations in the long piano strings are transmitted down the long piano wires and are amplified by contact to the piano soundboard below. The audio recordings are thus reproduced without any loudspeakers – instead, the motor coils, the long piano wires and soundboard become substitutes for a loudspeaker system.
Audio recordings transmitted into the piano strings consist of note sequences derived from piano compositions by Frederic Chopin. The note sequences were extracted from midi files of Chopin’s piano pieces and ‘recomposed’ using midi software, to form new pieces that were then recorded using a software-based piano. In total, twenty-six ‘recompositions’ were derived from twenty Preludes, two Etudes Opus 10 and 25, the Fantaisie Impromptu Opus 66, one Nocturne Opus 27 Nr. 1, one Polonaise Opus 53, and the first movement of the Sonata, Opus 35.
In addition to the piano sounds vibrating in the wires, whenever the wind blows perpendicular to the piano strings, they vibrate with Aeolian tones, thus adding a spontaneous audio event manifested by natural forces. These Aeolian tones blend with the audio signals or they sometimes drown out the audio signals, which re-emerge once the wind dies down or changes direction.
You might choose to accompany the video above with the track below. This piece was made by [interrupt: Jumper] and recently released on Test Tube.
Freedom Decoder [5'32"]
Chicken wire, also known as poultry netting and hexagonal netting, is a woven wire mesh. The video below shows how chicken wire mesh is woven. You can see how the wires are twisted together to make the hexagonal opening.
This particular machine is weaving mesh used in making Gabions. Although the mesh is larger (3″) and the wires used are heavier (11 gauge and heavier) than the chicken wire you can buy at your local store, the manufacturing process is similar.
There is one difference. This machine is doing continuous weave – the twisted wires run in the same direction the entire length of the twist. Chicken wire available in stores is made with a reverse twist – the twist switches direction (reverses itself) half way through the length of the twist. Continuous weave is inherently stronger than reverse twist.
‘The Arctic Soundscape Project’ is part of ‘The Global Soundscape Project’, establishing new standards for on-going bio-acoustic monitoring of the world’s most fragile eco-systems. A group of expert scientists, colleagues, audio associates, biologists, media and communication specialists join forces to explore the role of SOUNDSCAPE ECOLOGY in habitat, creature, and human health and well-being. The Arctic Soundscape Project is honored to visit areas within The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for this effort.
SOUNDSCAPE DOCUMENTARY – IN PROGRESS
Some terrific footage was obtained during the initial launch of the Arctic Soundscape Project (Phase I) in 2006 by filmmakers Bob Hillman and Lawrence Campling, who accompanied the original team in the field. During the upcoming (Phase II) field research, we’ll obtain new video to add posts and use in production of a future documentary on this effort. The podcast (at left) provides a short, ‘sound-led’ preview of the audio/naturalists at work. To support production contact: kkrause@wildsanctuary.com
Why is this important?
The Arctic Soundscape Project/Phase II, examines the practicalities of extending baseline studies to other natural habitats, toward launching other major recording surveys in fragile eco-systems around the world.
We’ll raise awareness about bio-acoustic science, encourage academic curiosity, build understanding of soundscape ecology, and share the ‘special values’ that make the Refuge a singularly distinctive ecosystem.
The ‘audio adventure’ aspect of our outreach employs today’s new communication vehicles and accessible technology to help connect ‘digital natives’ with wilderness and wildlife – in ways that educate and engage – through the media they know best.
Creative Applications: Visual programming languages, languages that create programs by the manipulation of graphical elements, as opposed to specifying lines of text, have seen an increased popularity in recent years both in audio and video synthesis. Some of the more well-known environments, ones that are regularly used for projects that are featured on CAN, include VVVV (real-time motion graphics and physical IO) MAX/MSP (real-time music and multimedia), Pure Data (ostensibly an open source equivalent of MAX/MSP) and Quartz Composer (video synthesis for MAC).
Visual programming owes its many of its conventions for the representation of information and programs from Flowcharts – a lesser used term for these kinds of environments is Data-flow Programming. VPL’s date back to the late 60′s. A good example is the GraIL system (GRaphical Input Language) a flowchart language entered on a graphics tablet developed by the Rand Corporation in 1969.
Sahel Sounds: This little cassette of music collected from cellphones has been in internet circulation lately (update — and the Guardian UK). Pitchfork did a nice write-up on the phenomena of “musical scarcity”, Rupture at Mudd Up! has given it some blog/radio play, and Portland’s own Gulls put together this remix of one of the tracks:
Niger Autotune (Emsitka) — Gulls Edit
Boomarm Nation: In 2010 returning from extensive travel in Mali and Mauritania, Chris Kirkley (Sahel Sounds) presented “Music from Saharan Cellphones”. The music on the compilation was collected from cellphones in the Northern Malian town of Kidal. In much of West Africa, cellphones are are used as all-purpose multimedia devices. In lieu of personal computers and high speed internet, cellphones house portable music collections, playback songs on tiny built-in speakers, and swap files through peer-to-peer Bluetooth wireless transfer. The songs collected in Kidal range from DIY Tuareg guitar, auto-tuned Moroccan chaabi, Malian coupé décalé, and fruityloop hip hop. Originally released as a limited run cassette tape by Mississippi Records in Portland OR, the cassette was uploaded to blogs and online media hubs, and quickly became a viral source of new and inspiring sounds.
On Oct.10 2011 Boomarm Nation and Sahel Sounds present: “Music For Saharan Cellphones”. Drawing on gifted producers and musicians from a variety of stylistic backgrounds and nationalities, each artist selected and re-interpreted a musical moment from the source material. From bass laden sound/clash ventures, abstract re-creations, and even an amazing autotune cover, the end result holds a rich assortment of well informed musical statements. Reflecting the energy and fidelity of its origins, these versions take on their own rare and exciting form. Using the mp3 as the medium, the Music and the Musicians become the diplomacy.
New Flesh Network(2011) is a musical performance for choir controlled by The Musical Turk. A project by Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke.
New Flesh Network is a musical performance for traditional choir, controlled via a network – The Musical Turk – by the artists in real-time. Every person in the choir wears a pair of ear muffs cancelling out all sounds, making them hear only the instructions that they individually receive in their in-ear headphones. They are also blindfolded to emphasize the fact that every person is just obeying the task they are given, for example notes that they should mimic, or phrases they should repeat.
The music is improvised (and will never be performed twice the same way) and reflects the network it is a part of. Every person executes a simple task, but the result is complex and organic.
The artists play the choir with the help of computers and multichannel audio interfaces, making it possible to transmit individual instructions to each member of the choir. The singers will never be able to interpret the instructions perfectly, still their musical interpretation is the only thing the artists hear (and can react on) creating an organic feedback system related to traditional improvised music.
Another gem by The New Honey Shade that will send you into a world where micro-explorers follow the chemical trails of rusty nano-creatures that slide on magnetic tapes. Here you will oscillate from the ocular to the auditory, and from extrospection to introspection. By producing this collection of ambrosial sounds, Mark Kuykendall respectfully rescues a forgotten document and turns it into a widely available experience for you to listen. In doing so, he remind us of the sometimes foolishly disregarded work of independent researchers around the world who remain hidden as treasures ready to be found.
The New Honey Shade: ‘This album is based on and dedicated to the work of E.D Anderson and his hand-bound book “Industrial Microscopy.” The book was found at his estate sale in Tulsa, OK. The book contains over 200 photographs. E. D. had photographed everything from fibers & fabrics, textiles & weaves, rocks & plants, animal hair & animal flesh all under a microscope at 400X with an old 35mm camera. Each musical piece is a dedication to a particular image he shot.
Download the album and receive a free hidden track entitled, “Skyward Sea Stains.” Also receive 13 hi res scanned photographs shot by Mr Anderson on his 35mm through his microscope in 1959. Each song is titled accordingly after a specific image.’
On their site: Everyone’s Mixtape celebrates the art of creating mixtapes. You can add to an existing mix, or start one of your own. Share with the world, your friends, or that girl from science class.
Everyone’s Mixtape is not about adding songs and hitting shuffle. It’s about the time you looked at a cassette’s length as a challenge. About the time you stayed up most of the night making sure all the tracks flowed from song to song. It’s about the time your heart skipped a beat when the boy from science class handed you your first mixtape.
Born with cerebral palsy, Dan Ellsey blossomed with help from Tod Machover, right. (MIT Media Lab, MIT Media Lab / February 24, 2008)
Ocean floor listening posts in the north Pacific off Vancouver Island
View of installation for Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto–Scarborough, March, 2011
DMX-LED Patches – Kalle Karlen
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